Taxes in the Virasana Empire
Taxes are only collected by sovereign nobles and form their most important and only ‘acceptable’ source of income. Taxes can only be collected from other nobles within your fief and from guilds running businesses there. Commoners and slaves are never taxed directly, though they may be tolled at gates, bridges or special roads. A special form of taxes is the income ‘harvested’ from serfs. Usually, serfs support their ‘direct’ (lowest ruling, most local) noble in form of a share of their produce and products. Often, guilds are charged by a noble to collect and sell those shares in return for a percentage of the sales. Occasionally, in times of war (or empty coffers), a percentage of serfs can be sold as slaves to both reduce the population as well as bring in some additional cash. As taxes are the lifeblood of the nobility, tax evasion is a crime that is rarely dared and swiftly and harshly punished. Tax Evasion Of course, everyone is trying to rip off the Emperor a little. And given the fact that hardly any kind of organized documentation exist, it is well possible to do so. Tax fraud on a large scale, though, requires a significant amount of criminal energy. As the chain of command through the nobility is very short, even not paying your local knight technically means you are withholding herons from the emperor, and the Chancellory would like to have a word with you. While having this kind of firepower at the tip of their fingers is a strong option for any noble suspecting foul play, there is a drawback - if the chancellory gets involved, they keep all the money, all outstanding taxes, all penalties and late fees. If the local noble solves the mess, they can keep all of it minus their usual upwards tax percentage. This mechanism cleans up the chancellory's slate quite nicely and actually only gets them involved in the very big cases or those of nobles with no assets at all to sort out cases like that. Compared to other crimes, tax evasion is punished rarely with physical punishment, only harsh penal fees. Tax collectors Generally, taxes are levied by yearly decree of the profiting noble, as opposed to a fixed and publicly known system of percentages. So while this may be absolutely unfair and inviting any kind of abuse, it is also a system that can instantly be adapted, changed, or skipped all together for one year. So while a ‘bad’ noble can and will use this to mercilessly drain their fief, most others will use their privilege of decision and only take what their subjects can give without cutting too deep. As many harsh and obvious disadvantages a system of hereditary absolutist nobility is, one (rare) advantage is the general emphasis on sustainability over short-term profits. As with so many things, the public view on tax collectors varies with the houses they collect the taxes for. While Quetzal collectors are free to make the occasional coin on the side by whatever means they like and are accordingly despised, the dry-as-bones bureaucrats of House Ndewane are disliked at worst, sometimes even silently pitied. Tax Excemption As a sidenote, ‘being exempt from all further taxes for the rest of their life’ is a status the Emperor hands out as highest honour only. It is reserved to those whose deeds for the Empire could not possibly be repaid and symbolizes that the Emperor and thus the Empire is forever indebted and will not dare to make any further demands. Famously, this status has been granted to Lotus Knights who reached retirement, beginning with Sir Bernardo Almaviva. Category:Economy Category:Legalities Category:Society Category:Umbrella Articles